ABSTRACT
“Migration uproots, and replanting takes time,” wrote Charles Tilly and C. Harold Brown in 1967 (Tilly and Brown, 1967, p.139). After coming to the Czech Republic and starting families here, Vietnamese parents deal with how to replant their child care and family ideologies in a new context. While being part of a transnational social field enables them to keep in touch with mothering strategies in Vietnam (through their relatives or friends, by following the situation there, etc.), living in the Czech Republic throws them into a different setting where different normal caring biographies are supported. Changes in family structure after migration (intensification of work life at the expense of family life and uprooting from extensive kinship networks that care can be delegated to) lead families to find a “substitute” grandmother for their children—a Czech nanny. Having a Czech nanny is becoming the post-migration norm in the Vietnamese community. While only 1–2 percent of Czech families make use of individual private paid child care, my interviewees estimated that the number of Vietnamese families seeking nannies for their children is around 80–95 percent. Most of them add that this is a “common,” “normal,” or “matter-of-fact” thing. In addition, it is not only “common” to have a nanny, it is also “normal” that strong (even permanent) ties between the nanny and the children emerge.
